Short answer: 20 habits that make Ink read like a machine, each with an example from Ink, the "never" line the writer would read, and whether we already have a rule or a count for it. ★ marks the ones you named yourself (your 09-10 list, your blind read). Tell me which numbers to keep; I'll add only those, then brew and count again.
| # | the habit | an example from Ink | the line the writer would read | rule now? | counted? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ✓ 1 | ★ "It is this, it is not that" — setting a claim against its opposite | "There is no ladder. There is simply a stretch of water." · "That is not statecraft. That is a business decision." | Never set a claim against its opposite: say what something is, not what it isn't. | no | yes |
| ✓ 2 | ★ Things that speak or know — the ice says, the street asks, the city answers | "the ice says otherwise; the ice wins" · "The machine swallows all that desperate intent" | Only people speak, ask, answer, know or want. Places, objects, numbers and data never do. | no | no |
| ✓ 3 | ★ Flat verdict sentences — the short "That is…" / "The X is…" line | "That is the whole game." · "A crate of vodka is not a lever." | Never write a short sentence that only delivers a verdict. | no | yes |
| 4 | The summing-up closer — every paragraph ends on its own moral | "Both are legal. Both are rational. Only one of them builds." | Never end a paragraph on a line that sums it up or draws its lesson. | as a "do" line | yes |
| 5 | ★ Titles built on a negative | "The Anthropic Settlement Is Not a Victory. It Is a Tollbooth." | Never make a title that turns on what didn't happen. | partly (title picked from five) | yes |
| ✓ 6 | ★ Reading the news from afar — "not in the story" | "I read the headline twice." · "The piece landed like a bill I didn't order." · "I have read a lot of these." | Never write about reading, watching or hearing the news. Start inside the story. | no | partly |
| 7 | Announcing its own moves | "Scorecard first. That's the honest order." · "Here is the part I care about." | Never announce what you are about to do or what you have just done. | as a "do" line | yes |
| ✓ 8 | ★ Filler that sounds wise — "someone always talking and nothing meaningful comes out" | "usually nothing, occasionally everything, and invisible in between" | Never write a line that sounds profound but adds no fact. | no | partly |
| ✓ 9 | ★ Metaphors that make it harder | "an unforgiving spreadsheet with jet engines" · "There is no solvent counterparty around to hand you a check if the world ends." | Never use a metaphor where a plain word works. Never explain a simple thing with a complicated picture. | no | yes (the metaphor nouns) |
| 10 | The closing sermon — ending by telling the reader what to do | "simply ask to see his test results." | Never end by telling the reader what to do or what to learn. | as a "do" line | partly |
| 11 | ★ The arranged last picture — "and then… and then…", or back to the opening image | "…and then a hundred miles of land happened, and then a town, and then an eleven-year-old with a margarine tub…" | Never close on an arranged picture or a return to the opening image. When you have said it, stop. | no | no |
| ✓ 12 | ★ Certainty and intensifier words — honest, exact, simply, merely, entirely, genuine, every single | "relentless, rigorous, invisible care across every single millimeter" · "the last honest spec" | Never pile on intensifiers. Never call a thing honest, exact or genuine to make it sound true. | no | yes |
| 13 | ★ Show-off sentence structure — "like a middle-school student practising" | "It isn't a deepfake… it's a subtraction, and subtraction is the cheapest lie there is." | Never build a sentence to show off its structure: no word handed from one clause to the next, no echo for effect. | no | no |
| ✓ 14 | ★ Numbers nobody needs | "It cost eight dollars." · "Lucky was 38.1 percent. Worked hard was 35.7 percent." | Never use a number unless the point depends on it. | code turns words into digits | partly (numbers not in the reporting) |
| 15 | Lists of three for rhythm | "the splice becomes the event, the caption becomes history, and the feed becomes the country." | Never list three things just for rhythm. | no | yes |
| 16 | The same point, five times | "tennis is won in the head, not in the racket." (closing five paragraphs) | Never say the same point twice. | as a "do" line | partly |
| 17 | The credential paragraph | "I've spent the better part of a century trying to evaluate uncertain business propositions." | Never tell the reader your credentials or how long you have done this. | no | yes |
| 18 | Explaining what the reader already knows | "Extradition, to put it super simply, is just one government formally asking another country to surrender a suspect." | Never explain a word or a name an ordinary reader already knows. | no | no |
| 19 | ★ Dashes — in titles, and one in every other sentence | "The planes were fine — the list broke" | Never put a dash in a title. At most one dash in a paragraph. | no | yes |
| 20 | Disclaimers about distance | "Then there is the money, which is outside my lane, so I will not pretend to parse every nuance of it." | (already a rule — kept as it is) | yes | yes |
Already fixed without a rule: "The X of the Y" and colon titles (the title field), spelled-out numbers (code), words the prompt leaked like "notebook" (removed). Sources: your 09-10 list and your blind read (the writing loop §10), the writing gap's 29 habits, the outside research §3.
The chosen lines go into the writer's house rules as one short block, in the order you rank them. Then a local brew on the same assignments as tonight's, counted against tonight's pieces — antithesis, verdict sentences, summing-up closers, announced moves, metaphor nouns, intensifiers, dashes — and, for #2, #11 and #13, which no code counts, a reader's count.